


Leave A Dream Where The Fallout Lies

by Go0se



Series: Origin Story [2]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Also featuring everyone else but they're asleep, Autistic Kobra Kid, Families of Choice, Featuring hints of tragic backstory, Huddling For Warmth, Mental Health Issues, Mental health in the desert, Other, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-13 09:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10510725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: Kobra tries to keep warm in the desert--more trouble than it sounds--and thinks about the people he loves.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'Huddle for warmth' square of my Bandom Bingo 2k17 card! More platonic warmth-huddling for everyone.  
> Head's up: the teen rating is for some mildly graphic description of death, memories of war, and depression.
> 
> ~

Kobra couldn’t sleep.

He was resisting the urge to compile a list of everything he hated about the desert in his head. Spinning wheels like that never got a sunshine anywhere good; his own dwelling had made that pretty crystal over the years.  Instead, he was going to think about all the same shit as ‘problems’, the kind he could possibly solve.

A problem with the desert no one thought of before they got out into it, Kobra decided while holding as still as he could, was how fucking cold it turned at night.  
Some folks didn’t care, of course. The Dracs sent out to hunt didn’t care; if you weren’t dead before you put a Drac mask on you were sure as shit dead after, and ghosts don’t need keeping warm. Waveheads were usually too buzzed to bother.  
If you were a Runner alone the best you could hope for was to sleep through it. If you were in a crew, though, you usually piled up. The closer together the warmer you got.

 

That was where Kobra was now, him and the other Fabulous killjoys. (And really, while he appreciated that their name was shiny as hell, Grimy killjoys fit the medical bill more most times.) Curled up somewhere in Zone 4, under a lean-to they’d stitched together from an old piece of sheet metal and a half-demolished foundation wall.

Jet Star sat in the moonlight a stride or so outside the lean-to, his blaster loose from its holster on his hip, taking the first watch of the night. Poison, Kobra himself, Ghoul, and Honey were all laying on the sand under the sheet metal, comfortable as they could get. Bunched in like kibble pebbles in a can. Poison had slung an arm around Kobra’s waist, and Kobra and Ghoul were pressed shoulder to shoulder.  Honey was curled up beside Ghoul, her forehead tucked to his arm and her scrawny knees tucked up near her chin so all of her could fit under Poison’s spare jacket. (Per protocol, the motorbaby had the best place to run from in case a Drac busted into their sand-laden shelter.) All three of them seemed to be as sleeping sure as sound, which Kobra couldn’t understand at all.  
It was cute, yeah, but them all hanging off of each other meant that Kobra couldn’t move very much unless he wanted to risk three tired teammates complaining in a small space in the morning. That made the second problem of the night. Holding still for a long time wasn’t his strongest suit.

 

He shifted his legs as subtly as he could, wincing as his hip stretched out of the twist it’d solidified into from sitting tensed up in the Trans Am for hours. It wasn’t so bad. Would loosen up over the night most likely. At least _he_ had an exercise routine to combat it. The others would be getting serious strain injuries eventually, because fuck knew none of them would stretch like he told them to.

Least of all Ghoul, who’d nevertheless managed to stretch out as much as the lean-to would allow him and in doing that left less room for Kobra’s legs, because he was more of a goblin than the dozen or so motorbabies Kobra knew put together. Kobra shifted again, parking his own feet on top of Ghoul’s boots out of two parts necessity and one-part spite. The heat leeching up his legs was a nice bonus.

 

God damn but he was tired.

 

It’d been a long-ass day on the road. The five of them had been motoring since noon at a head’s up callout from Doctor D over the radio: flock of Scarecrows seen at the horizon, unknown mission statement, keep cool if you could or scarper while you can.  
Bailing on short notice was barely a problem to them. The Fabulous killjoys were always ready to hit the road. (Lifestyle hazard.) They’d thrown their packsacks into the trunk and ran fast away from the Five border, into the relative safety of the hills in Four. Come nightfall they had taken what shelter they could find because the Trans Am’s headlamps were more conspicuous in the dark than the ground they’d cover was worth.

The Am itself was waiting within easy sprinting distance, hidden under an old grey tarp they’d weighed down at the corners with plastic bottles full of sand. Kobra thought of the seats inside longingly. If they didn’t hear an all-clear call by sundown tomorrow, he could rock-paper-scissors Jet or Ghoul for a spot in the front seat. He’d deal with the cold for a night.  
Still, he wasn’t going to leave the group now. One person could sleep in a car, but five was a tight fit and if someone busted through the windshield they’d have nowhere to go. At least under the open sky they had a fair fighting chance.

 

The sand rustled outside and hissed through the open sides of their makeshift shelter, scraping over their feet and their faces. Everyone had their bandanas up over their noses, but really they should have put their rebreathers on ‘less they inhale particles and catch sick. Kobra knew why no one had, though; same reason he wasn’t wearing his Good Luck helmet himself. Comfort. His helmet would make his head even more uncomfortable than usual come morning, same with Jet and Poison’s; and the rubber-mask things Honey and Ghoul wore fucking itched.  
The sound and scratching-feel of the sand made little _tick-tick-ticks_ in Kobra’s head that’d eventually lead to a boom, but not for a while yet. That was a problem he’d have to ignore for now.

 

A piece of dirt hit his eye and he flinched up instinctively, squeezing his eye shut. Damnit.  
Poison huffed into his shoulder, his arm tightening for a second on Kobra’s belly. Ghoul and Honey both stirred for a couple seconds, too, before settling again.  
Exhaling slowly, he made his arms relax. He could feel his eyes watering the sand out, slightly too late; but as a bonus Ghoul had somehow twisted his legs further under Kobra’s own, so Kobra was slightly warmer. Milkshake.

 

He scratched his shoulder as much as he could without moving his elbow, and looked up at the metal wall-ceiling. His four crewmates (one farther than the others) breathed around him.  
His thoughts started sliding around each other, moving backwards. 

It would've bothered him real bad, once. All the noise at the same time. For all he was used to it now, all this space-sharing had been weird to him back when he was green. He’d never had any siblings growing up, or cousins, or sleepover-classmates to trade secrets with in the dark. And all that would’ve happened Before, anyway, so it was already half a dream to him.    
After the Fires--in the panic-haze of the immediate aftermath--there wasn’t a lot of time to snuggle up to people. By the time Kobra had enrolled in the army it’d already been mostly controlled by BLI, which’d discouraged closeness among recruits who could still think for themselves. Most everyone Kobra had huddled near in the dark had either been cadavers already or on their way there. (That still showed up in his dreams and even waking hours, sometimes, out of the fucking blue. Bang and flash grenades blasting the air apart, and the smell all around him.)  
 

When he’d first gotten out to the Zones he’d ran solo for a while and still hadn’t gotten it. Some of the runners at the watering holes Kobra had stumbled up to after a night shivering in the desert would throw him a sideways glance, ask why he hadn’t found someone to shack up with for the dark.  
It’d always made him snort into his sweet stuff. Cold was one thing, and sex another, but zonking out beside a stranger? Not knowing if someone else would ghost you before you woke up? Who’d deal with that for a body beside them?  
The others had tried to explain, spinning stories about peace and darkness mixed with steady breathing; the kind of safety a body felt. He’d thought they’d had a few too many rocks rattling around on their hardpan.

 

Of course, days after, he’d ran across Poison and dropped almost directly into his arms. Funny how things shook out sometimes.

 

He'd learned pretty quick. There was the warmth factor, obviously, but it was about more than keeping warm. Like the nameless runners had told him, the heartbeats of others mattered; the slow breathing and weird snuffles of people asleep. It was a kind of knowing someone when you slept beside them. Different kind than knowing Poison biblically, or when the starshine was awake and talking and laughing, or sitting beside him in a car.  A more fragile kind, like the dew drops on the edges of things in the morning that Kobra would sometimes be lucky enough to see.  
When Ghoul and Jet first joined up with Poison and him, making them the Fabulous crew all together, the idea of sleeping all in a heap made even more sense. For Kobra, it had been easier knowing them talking to the sandman, at first. Otherwise they were always _sudden_ , in his space all the time, strange and too loud. It made Kobra’s brain buzz until it hurt and his voice died under his tongue, and then they had all asked what was wrong with him. It was enough to set a sunshine off trying to get to know anybody.  He’d learned to care about them by watching them dream.  
It’d got easier, obviously. Thank fuck. They’d all grew closer together, compressing with time and shared losses. They’d learned more about each other. Not always good things by themselves: stuff like how Poison was clingy, Jet snored like a six-cylinder engine and Ghoul mumbled out coded messages in his sleep.  
But it was all funny, all dew-drop moments, after a while.

 

The process had repeated again when they’d first found the kid. Kobra still remembered those first few weeks of the four of them becoming five. Her name’d been Grace back then, which he hadn’t known until after, because the girl wouldn’t talk. She’d barely even eat. You didn’t know if she slept; you just knew she was shivering to herself in the corner of the diner, so loud you could hear her teeth click inside her tiny head.  
She hadn’t trusted them at first, which was smart as hell as far the killjoys were concerned. Kobra wouldn’t’ve trusted them either. She’d been a cracked little engine block of a motorbaby back then.

He hadn’t expected to love her, but he did now. Like all of them did. He'd gotten attached to her faster than he had the others, if he thought about it. Part of it had been watching over her while she was asleep, and part of it was… well, she was just a _kid_. Maybe that was 'cause of the medic in him. He couldn’t have someone so small propped up in front of him hurt and just leave them to die.  
And after you put people together enough you care about them, whether you like it or not.

 

Some days Kobra wasn’t sure if he liked it. Sometimes his heart-feelings felt more like he was going to be sick, or like he’d been hit with electric light, and he couldn’t make hood or tailpipe of it.

But he’d die for Honey if he had to. He’d die for all of them. Fuck knew he killed for them almost every day. That was a weight in itself—all the blood on his hands. Thinking about that felt like a deep pit opened up in his chest, with all of his heartbeats and everything good he’d ever done just getting swallowed up in it. But there was no other way to live out here.

One of the reasons he loved Honey, and he knew it was selfish so he’d never said it out loud, was because she reminded him of the good things he could do. Hell, they all did. Everyone in his fabulous crew saved each other’s asses one time or another. It was part of why they worked so well.

 

Even with Ghoul’s stolen leg warmth, Kobra’s toes stung a little inside his boots, both from the blisters and the cold. The stinging brought Kobra unpleasantly back from the tunnel his thoughts had gotten a little lost inside.  
Once he remembered his toes everything else came back in a flood of sense and sound. The wind’s whistle, the sand scraping. His own heart’s staccato thumping, despite everything. Outside the lean-to and ten thousand feet up the stars sung out their static whine, relentlessly as anything else, and he couldn’t block any of it out of his head.  
He closed his eyes against it, grimacing.   
  


The black insides of his eyelids didn’t help. The yawning pit in the back of his brain sat behind them, still; unmoving, a reminder of what would happen if he stepped backwards. He’d gone through seasons where it was there for days, end to end and on all sides.   
Kobra exhaled again, looking up at the triangle of sky he could see through the side of the lean-to. Shit happened. You breathed through it. He’d learned that a while ago.

   
Over the star’s static he could hear Jet humming under his breath, something they’d heard in the Am on the long drive. It was a tune Kobra recognized, and liked too. He smiled a little at the back of his friend’s head through the dark.

  
He still couldn’t move too much and finding a comfortable spot for his head wouldn’t shake out, but fuck it. He shifted one more time, digging one of his shoulders into the sand underneath him and turning his legs so he was almost on his side. Carefully, Kobra took his datemate’s hand and threaded their fingers together, moving Poison’s hand from his waist to his heart. The physical connection helped him keep time, even if the beat didn’t slow down.

He checked quickly to make sure that Honey was still out, then rested his forehead on Ghoul’s greasy hair and closed his eyes one more time, pulling his facemask partway down to help prop them shut. Morning would come quick enough. They’d all have to look alive as soon as it did.

 

 

//


End file.
